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RTSP Client For GNU/Linux Systems?
gilgongo writes: "The Arts Council of England are doing an interview with Richard Stallman for the CODE conference here in the UK, and we plan to stream an archive of it later that day. Stallman has stipulated that his interview must be able to be seen by GNU/Linux systems (i.e. just RealVideo is a no-no).
Our RealServer installation (running on RedHat 6.2) will do RTSP, so we assume that takes care of the protocol worries, but now we can't find any eaily obtained/installed clients to test it on. So - what do Linuxers use for seeing those streaming media clips with?" So with what tools would you most like to experience this interview? (And I hope streaming isn't the only option -- what's wrong with a nice downloadable version? Not everyone has a fast connection.)
If it is a live event, just multicast it with vic and vat.
Encode your video in MPEG-1, otherwise. You can stream this with Real (with a plugin), QuickTime, JMF (from Sun), and other things, such as the KOM player. You can also make the file available for download for those with slower connections.
Maybe RMS is aiming for the streaming Ogg format, and Vorbis for audio. Any word on video codec? I know Intel/Logos has released the code for Indeo 5.x...
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You're right. I haven't. This still doesn't answer the quesiton: What format does he want used?
If he's going to be so adament about this point, then ask him what you should use. Let him do the worrying about what format, encoder and decoder to use.
Also see if this means you can use the "RMS format" and Real for streaming.
If he was interested in whether the people interested in seeing it actually could, then it would be a no-brainer: he would use RealVideo. Because almost all people using GNU software are running Linux (and most of the rest are running Solaris) and those people have free-as-in-beer RealPlayers easily available to them.
But he's not interested in whether his target audience can see him.
He's interested in using this as an opportunity to make a political statement.
Which is fine.
But call it what it is. It's certainly not the pragmatic decision that you characterized it as.
Sure, I'll bet you 5 million dollars that I don't.
Cough up, d00d. I've known about non-x86 Linux for ages.
The original article said nothing about requiring that the feed be available on non-x86 machines and, unless a "GNU/Linux" system really is a system with no non-free software (and I'll believe that only if somebody posts a reference; I don't see anything obvious on the FSF Web site about that), it didn't even say anything about requiring the feed to be viewable by free software.
(Saying that the feed had to be viewable by "GNU/Linux systems" seems a very odd way, indeed, to say "has to be viewable if you use only free software"; what about GNU/Hurd, for example? Why not just say "has to be viewable if you use only free software", as that is, I suspect, what Stallman meant?)
Yeah, I don't have RealPlayer installed on the Linux partition on my home machine, I have to boot another OS on it to run RealPlayer...
...oh, wait, that other OS is FreeBSD, and it's running RealPlayer in Linux emulation.
(I'm not at home right now, so I don't remember which version of RP it is, but I think it was an RP 8 beta - which doesn't seem to have expired.)
Go to Real's home page, click on "RealPlayer" on the bar at the top listing "Download"s, click on "RealPlayer 8 Basic" from that page, and proceed from there. Various Linux versions are available.
Stallman has stipulated that his interview must be able to be seen by GNU/Linux systems (i.e. just RealVideo is a no-no).
Sounds like you're free to use Real as well as Windows Media Player, and Quicktime too if you really want. Of those, Real can be used by x86 Linux users and some others.. pretty much any x86 Unix.
Stallman, however, appears to be asking that it be viewable also by someone using a "pure" Free Software/GNU system, thus ruling out all of the above, including Real. I believe Apple's RTSP server is open source. Your problem will be in finding a player.
But as long as he didn't stipulate that the GNU-compliant solution be as good as the others or that it must be streamed, I guess you could just post an MPEG-1 video clip and let him download it. (I'm assuming here that Stallman will be the only person who will insist on watching it this way, so don't worry about bandwidth for a horde of people downloading the MPEG.)
This is a fair and thought-provoking thing for Stallman to ask for. I'm just not sure what his intended point is, since the GNU community is certainly free to write a streaming server, codec, and playback system under the GPL.
Hmmm...I'd have to ask two questions with this. Are the people that really want to see you the ones you need to be convincing with a RMS video, or are the people that you need to be convinced the ones that will not be able to see your speach because its in some wierd format.
:-) The rest of my post is valid though...
Having said this, why not make it in multiple formats? My site just did a few interviews for a music conference in January (thanks Jonathan if yer reading) and it was decided that we'd go with multiple formats. We already had this in MPEG and then we converted a copy to Real.
The MPEG was very clean and fluid, but ended up being 25 megs. I've got a fast connection at home, but even mine isn't fast enough to stream 25 megs in 8 minutes, so it was set up as a downloadable. The Real file came out at just over a meg...enough to fit on a floppy if I even used them anymore. Even a slow connection should be able to stream this without too many glitches.
Something to think about. The requirements were that the GNU Only folks be able to watch this. In this case, they'd be able to watch it and have a copy clean enough for archival so they can burn it to VCD and pray to it at their Open Alter, while the rest of us simply download it and watch it on our Macs and WinPCs.
As a finaly note: ARGH!!!! Why would anyone want to run video from Linux??? Ya loose the beauty of the command line!!! If I want pretty graphics, I'll boot into my X Ready Powerbook. If I want a confusing GUI, I'll stop at my Windows machines!!! Ok, enough of my happy fun fun trolling effort
clif
I strongly agree! [insert random number of additional exclamation points here...]
Actually, I'd be quite happy just to find an RTSP-capable equivalent of wget, which would enable me to download clips to view at full quality later without any special work having to be done on the server side, but it appears nobody has done anything like this yet as far as I can tell. Something like this would let me pull down clips in Realvideo format (the only one www.atomfilms.com and many other sites offer that can be viewed on Linux it would seem) and watch them, regardless of the crappiness of my internet connection...
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The question was about client software that would meet RMS's requirements, aka be free software. The link you gave is to streamingserver.org which mainly has info on streaming servers. It does have a two links to clients, one is to a Java API, the other is to a non-free Mac client.
a ye r/
My google and freshmeat searches turn up
http://www.kom.e-technik.tu-darmstadt.de/kom-pl
http://freshmeat.net/projects/popcorn/
both can only handle mpeg1.
Timothy strikes again. (Although I've got my prefs set to filter Timothy from my main page, his stuff still shows up in the old articles list so I can rant about it. =)
... Come in, fact checking ... No response, Captain.
I'm not sure if RMS' concern is about (1) GNU/Linux playability by any means or about (2) Free software usage.
If (1): Realplayer is available for GNU/Linux on at least x86 (and IIRC some other platforms too). A quick look at real's web site will tell you that.
If (2): Well, obviously you can't do anything that involves the RealVideo server, because it isn't Free software. Duh.
Hello, fact checking?
Here.
I found it using Google.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
(And I hope streaming isn't the only option -- What's wrong with a nice downloadable version? Not everyone has a fast connection.)
I wholeheartedly agree. I never saw a benefit of (not live) streaming media, especially at home over a dial-up. I'd rather wait 10 minutes while a 2 minute video clip downloads than watch the horribly crap-ified streamed version of the same clip. The supposed benefits of streamed media (It doesn't take up space on your hard drive) are a mute point when the price and size of today's disk drives are taken into effect. So what's the benefit? Is it simply that the producers of said media want to controll its distribution? If so, well, its working: not only do I not re-distribute streaming media, I don't watch it myself.